Robert Young fakes run across America

Watcher of videos wrote:

Just how do you start the conversation with your sponsor that you're a total fraud and will need to ride in the back of the RV?

It's really difficult to truly tell, but the data from the first few days suggest they might've given real effort at the beginning. Five percent of the way into a long journey the three amigos might've realized they had no chance. Everyone involved, including the sponsor, would've looked foolish to wave the white flag on day three after hyping this thing up so much and making an expensive website. At that point a single young employee of the sponsor would be outnumbered in the RV and might be persuaded to go along with the ruse by the guys with experience in this type of activity.

rjm33 wrote:

Please give some specific examples with references to published scientific literature to show why Ross Tucker is an idiot and mentally retarded.

Peer reviewed stuff is good since it has to be reviewed. However, some of his blog stuff is out there.

He's Toast wrote:

Watcher of videos wrote:

Just how do you start the conversation with your sponsor that you're a total fraud and will need to ride in the back of the RV?

It's really difficult to truly tell, but the data from the first few days suggest they might've given real effort at the beginning. Five percent of the way into a long journey the three amigos might've realized they had no chance. Everyone involved, including the sponsor, would've looked foolish to wave the white flag on day three after hyping this thing up so much and making an expensive website. At that point a single young employee of the sponsor would be outnumbered in the RV and might be persuaded to go along with the ruse by the guys with experience in this type of activity.

I don't buy the theory that they started the run as a legit effort. Rob knows his past history of cheating and lies. In addition, when you sit down and do the daily mileage you must know how your fitness stacks up agains that 60 mile per day requirement. I believe that this was a money making venture from day one. They had it all planned to do whatever it took (bike rides or RV) to get way ahead and then by the time they could arrive in Pennsylvania they would be fresh for some celebratory 40 mile per day runs all the say to Times square. And they believed their fanboys across the pond would be dumping more money and buying more books all along the way.

He's Toast wrote:

It's really difficult to truly tell, but the data from the first few days suggest they might've given real effort at the beginning. Five percent of the way into a long journey the three amigos might've realized they had no chance. Everyone involved, including the sponsor, would've looked foolish to wave the white flag on day three after hyping this thing up so much and making an expensive website. At that point a single young employee of the sponsor would be outnumbered in the RV and might be persuaded to go along with the ruse by the guys with experience in this type of activity.

Did we ever get to the bottom of whether he planned to run the chosen 3000 miles (or minimum distance, 2766 was it?) consecutively? If not, he could have quietly changed the rules after that initial few days' effort and convincingly argued that he could ride in the RV for a while until the next section he wanted to run. What that doesn't explain, or excuse, are the TomTom segments which do not appear to be completed on his own two feet with no mechanical assistance.

Anyway, I think we've now entered the waiting game while the SKINS experts review the data they have access to, unless any of our own number-crunchers can work more of their magic, or we do get some results from the CCTV FOIA requests. I'm happy to keep badgering quietly on FB, Twitter and so on, but only if there is something substantive to ask or say. We will NEVER convince those who believe in him wholeheartedly that any of this has been fraudulent, even if he himself videos a confession stating it. I'm contemplating contacting the publisher, to see if they have any action they're inclined to take. Any other non-technical leads I could help with?

Hiro wrote:

OK I liked this new development. Here it is:

http://ryinvestigation.blogspot.com/2016/06/rob-young-uploads-driving-gps-file.html

I think this post has some good analysis, but what if the explanation for this is that he simply left his GPS running in the RV. He is running through the construction section, and the RV is trying to stay with him, but eventually has to speed up. Then they backtrack to meet up with Rob again (he has made some progress, so they don't have to backtrack all the way), then they all continue on down the road. He originally all of his data to strava, saw that one was not him running, so deleted it (i.e., he never claimed that was him running).

With that explanation, it is much less incriminating since we are only left with the fact that they have the GPS running in the RV. This is the same scenario as the 5 hour/ 35 mile tomtom screenshot from Emporia through Lebo. We know the data came from the RV, but that doesn't mean much* unless he claims it as part of his running.

* It does show they frequently have a GPS recording while in the RV (and on the bike as we have seen) which makes it less likely these are accidental recordings.

"* It does show they frequently have a GPS recording while in the RV (and on the bike as we have seen) which makes it less likely these are accidental recordings."

This alone is grounds for disqualification as a cheat from any regulated Ultra event. There is no scenario where having their GPS running while in the moving RV or on another person while on a moving bicycle is explainable to an independent judge.

Investigator wrote:

Investigator wrote:

Do we still have the link for the now empty Joanna account? I mean, a screenshot, the fact that I don't think Joanna Hanasz was trying to concurrently set a transcon record, and that these activities were deleted once we started talking about them are pretty good evidence that it was really Rob Young using that account.

I really like this new 1:56 mile/deleted activity/speeding up in the RV due to lane closure stuff. Will try for a new blog post tonight.

OK I liked this new development. Here it is:

http://ryinvestigation.blogspot.com/2016/06/rob-young-uploads-driving-gps-file.html

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GodDAMN, is that good. Forget Pulitzer, I'm gonna nominate you for a freaking MacArthur.

Ridiculously awesome work.

I bow in your general direction.

He's Toast wrote:

It's really difficult to truly tell, but the data from the first few days suggest they might've given real effort at the beginning. Five percent of the way into a long journey the three amigos might've realized they had no chance. Everyone involved, including the sponsor, would've looked foolish to wave the white flag on day three after hyping this thing up so much and making an expensive website. At that point a single young employee of the sponsor would be outnumbered in the RV and might be persuaded to go along with the ruse by the guys with experience in this type of activity.

No. Dustin and Rob knew very well how they were going to break this record, before they boarded the plane to the USA.

It's possible that Michael was innocent in the beginning, but he should have quitted immediately and informed his employer on what was going on.

In my opinion, this official investigation shows the good intentions of the SKINS CEO, but I wouldn't be surprised if some lower employees are involved in this scam.

I guess the data from the first days shows a real effort because this was in more populated areas and journalists were filming them.

Things that can still be done:

- contacting the publisher and informing them that part of their book is plagiarism.

- contacting the authors of the original works and informing them that their works has been plagiarized.

- elaborate the 373 mile run: a couple of pages ago it was established that the first part of this run was fake as well.

I received a reply from the Power of 10 concerning the Thames Meander Marathon:

"We amended it a few days ago - and it looks like originally the results were changed after we imported them - that happens quite frequently and no doubt we were not notified at the time

Rob can't just amend without us confirming from an official source"

do we have a link to the the original Joanna Hanasz strava account? and the data we downloaded from there?

Good to hear the panel is in place.

While there is no obligation to provide it, it would be interesting to see the original, unedited (if edited) data files with HR and such.

I see three plausible scenarios for SKINS employee Michael Spheinchter:

1. He was in on the con from the very beginning, and was promised a payout from RY. It would be easy to keep this from his managers.

2. He's young and impressionable. During the early days of the run there was some sharing of sausage, and RY and Dustbin then blackmailed him: participate in our scam or we'll show the world these pictures of your bratwurst. The Brits would have obviously planned this in advance. It may even be their standard procedure for these long events.

3. The con goes all the way to the top of SKINS, and Michael was simply the fall guy for if something went wrong. In which case he'd probably be given a year's severance pay or some such to keep quiet about it.

Occam's Razor suggests that number 1 is the most likely. But these chaps have long proven that they're not afraid of bizarre scenarios.

Another Theory wrote:

He's Toast wrote:

It's really difficult to truly tell, but the data from the first few days suggest they might've given real effort at the beginning. Five percent of the way into a long journey the three amigos might've realized they had no chance. Everyone involved, including the sponsor, would've looked foolish to wave the white flag on day three after hyping this thing up so much and making an expensive website. At that point a single young employee of the sponsor would be outnumbered in the RV and might be persuaded to go along with the ruse by the guys with experience in this type of activity.

I don't buy the theory that they started the run as a legit effort. Rob knows his past history of cheating and lies.

The main reason I'm open to the possibility that they didn't plan the cheating from the beginning, is that they did a monumentally shitty job of cheating.

If they weren't figuring out how to cheat on-the-fly, it seems like they would have figured out in advance how to make an RV GPX track that looks a lot more like a run, they would have acquired GPS devices that don't collect cadence, they would have shared that data more openly to reduce suspicion, etc.

I mean, if you know you'll be cheating from the beginning, why would you even bother taking cross-country crazy-ass shortcuts up mountainsides, or take the RV down a dirt road where it gets stuck (and risks forfeiting the whole attempt)? Just stick to the roads and make up those two-tenths of a mile overnight in the RV. Such risk-taking seems to have stopped once the cheating began in earnest.

Maybe I'm a sucker, but I actually believe Dustin's frustration that you can hear in the days of the blog at the lack of a plan/schedule (whether a plan to run, or a plan to cheat, they're probably both lacking!)

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"Our day starts at 8pm, the time Rob set off from Huntington Beach. Rob runs through the night as we try to get a marathon done in the first 6 hours. Then Rob comes in for some breakfast. Then it’s back out for another 6 hours to get another marathon done. After than an hour for lunch. Then whatever mileage he can manage before 3pm when we all go to bed for 5 hours.

That’s the schedule for the moment anyway.

In reality though things turn out a little different. Those 1 hour meal breaks can become 2-3 hour sleeps. And those gentle 6 hour marathons have been managed in 4 hours. But the plan is the best we’ve got at the moment and it gives Rob some structure."

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Lisa Smith-Batchen...has been sharing her own mileage plans with us. Given that Rob had no plan as such, Lisa’s detailed and well-thought out plan is a real blessing and something we are now using to make sure we are hitting the right miles at the right time. Essentially it’s about building up to the big miles, further down the line, once we have stopped climbing. For the moment it’s enough to be averaging 55 miles a day, and Rob is already ahead of that number.

==============

So it sounds like Dustin actually sort of wanted to follow a reasonable transcon plan initially. He's not saying "Rob is doing 4-hour marathons, which is normally a total no-no for a transcon, but because of his unique physiology he can do it and that's why we're going to set the record!!!"

Also, LOL, as they ended up doing the exact opposite of LSB's slow-through-the-mountains advice.

Of course they could also just be too dumb to know how to cheat well.

Regarding Michael Speicher, it's interesting that he didn't just passively look the other way. He gave a full-throated pledge that the run was legitimate on his Facebook:

"There have been speculations, that Rob has been "cheating" and not running at all, but I can confirm that Rob has ran every step, foot, mile on his own. I have been present every step of the way and will continue to do so."

Asher Delmott wrote:

Hiro wrote:

OK I liked this new development. Here it is:

http://ryinvestigation.blogspot.com/2016/06/rob-young-uploads-driving-gps-file.html

I think this post has some good analysis, but what if the explanation for this is that he simply left his GPS running in the RV.

I agree that's the obvious defense, and though I bet that defense can be easily countered, even allowing him the ability to produce a reasonable-sounding defense obfuscates and reduces the clarity of our claims. Which is why having a multitude of almost-smoking guns is important.

I haven't done the math, but my guess is that the time spent backtracking before starting forward again is nowhere near the time necessary if that was the time for a running Rob to catch up and re-join the RV. Also, this was a one-way Interstate. The RV would have had to travel in reverse on the shoulder in order to backtrack. Why do that, when you could just stop on the shoulder, and wait a little bit longer for Rob to catch up?

So maybe it would be good to do that math (and add it to the post if it checks out!)

Yeah I hear you on that, but I decided to go ahead with it because of the following facts:

-Rob said he'd upload everything, but there's now a total gap for that section. If it was an accidental recording, where is the real run?

-Did the driver of RV get out and backtrack on foot? Because the RV certainly didn't reverse into the closed left lane at night I don't think... Why not just wait a couple minutes for him? If he did get out and backtrack - he would have had to grab the watch or have been wearing the watch, which is pretty damning that other people are carrying the watch, and shows it wasn't just left running accidentally somewhere inside the RV. Can we even confirm that a GPS watch would have signal deep inside an RV? I have to put mine on my dash to get satellites in my compact car... I don't think it'll lock on if it's under the seat or whatever.

-It was uploaded to a fake account and and then deleted, which implies the attempt to hide something.

If you look at other Transcons on Strava, like Jason Romero or Adam Kimble, there is a rare activity that takes place in part or whole in a vehicle. But there are 2 key differences:

- those parts are usually at freeway speeds, probably forgetting to stop the watch on the way to eat or something, and

- its easy to dismiss because there is run coverage for those area, and there is a believable 50+ mile activity every day with cadence, at like 16:00 min/mi.

I know I'm kind of arriving at the conclusion I want to, but I think that on balance it adds to the evidence of cheating. They can explain it away, but the more "25 miles at 5:40pace at night" runs that they claim "oh the watch was left running in the RV, just believe us he was really running", the more they bury themselves, so I wanted to start piling it on.

Racergirl wrote:

[quote]Did we ever get to the bottom of whether he planned to run the chosen 3000 miles (or minimum distance, 2766 was it?) consecutively? If not, he could have quietly changed the rules after that initial few days' effort and convincingly argued that he could ride in the RV for a while until the next section he wanted to run. What that doesn't explain, or excuse, are the TomTom segments which do not appear to be completed on his own two feet with no mechanical assistance.

I am just guessing but I think that the miles would have to be consecutive. If not what would stop someone jogging one mile at one coast, flying somewhere flat, and with nice temperatures for running, flying to the other coast and then running one mile (assuming you run the minimum required distance in the middle). If you did this you would avoid the desert, and hills, so I think it must be consecutive and every time you end a run/walk, this where you must pick up next time

good grief wrote:

Good to hear the panel is in place.

While there is no obligation to provide it, it would be interesting to see the original, unedited (if edited) data files with HR and such.

This is an important point to make the panel aware off quickly. The analysis must be done on the original TomTom data. And those data should be released to the public immediately. A crowd sourcing of the original data will also help the panel in their work.

Yeah I'm not understand the whole Michael thing. If I were him, I'd be doing some major throwing of people under the bus right about now.

If he was paid off, I doubt it's worth more than a steady income at SKINS?

Maybe he just went along with it a little much, and at some point unknowingly crossed the line from being able to save his own ass. Even if he went to Jaimie with a sob-story confession now, he's seen on video on Facebook lying through his teeth. The ONLY way he keeps his job after crossing that line is if somehow the investigation finds it was legit or he didn't know anything. So that's probably why he has kept his mouth shut.

Can't think of any other reason for him not to spill the beans, but I guess "I've come too far" is one that makes sense.

When I look at the street view of that highway section as well as others, I have to ask how in the hell Rob and his crew are still alive. The thought of traveling in an RV at 10 mph on highways in the middle of the night seems to be a death wish. And the portions where Rob was actually running in front or behind it even more so. Are there no state troopers out there? I can't imagine a trooper not having a problem with seeing this circus show traveling in front of him endangering not only their lives but lives of other drivers that must slam on the brakes.

I wonder if the other transcon runners picked more sensible routes and also ran during more sensible times of the day.

reminder of real life wrote:

Congrats to every truth searcher in this thread. It's going the right way. But don't lay down in the RV and expect you'll be at your destination by the end of August. Keep up the pressure. Don't look at SKINS or the professors as your friends and saviors. Treat them as your adversaries until the report is on the table and the right action has been taken. You would be amazed if you knew how little some professors know about analyzing real data. It's likely that they will have a student to look at the data and present the results to them. That's not necessarily a bad thing but it introduces more uncertainty into the process.

Don't let the guard down! Let the professors know that THEIR reputation is also on stake.

The best method is to treat all involved with respect and you will be treated respectfully in turn.

I guess they didn't have very good staff at the school you attended because you obviously have not worked closely with professors in their field of knowledge. That's a shame.